Power Line Prize

Kyle Smith is the developer of the Debt Bomb application for mobile devices. The Daily Caller published a brief item on the app last week. We have gone straight to the developer for the story. Kyle Smith writes: In the late winter and early spring of 2011, there was a lot of media coverage regarding the national deficits and debt. Americans understand that these amount to staggeringly large numbers, yet »

I can’t pretend that it is a surprise: “Doorbell” is closing in on 1,000,000 views, between this site and YouTube, so it is no shock that 62% of our readers voted for “Doorbell” as the winner of the People’s Choice Award. You can follow the link to see the final standings; the second place finisher, “You’re Gonna Pay,” had 11%, so the race can’t be described as close. Your votes »

The final nominee for the People’s Choice Award is “Talking Babies.” Talking baby videos are one of those things you either love or you don’t. I liked this one a lot, and so did many of our readers. Like many entries in the Power Line Prize competition, it put the emphasis where it should be, on the next generation. And who can fail to identify with the three guys at »

“Doorbell” has to be considered the favorite for the People’s Choice Award. For those who may have missed it, we decided to add a final award to the Power Line Prize contest: $2,000 to our readers’ favorite non-prize winner, based on a reader poll. There are eight nominees for the People’s Choice Award, six of which have been posted over the last few days. Nominee number seven is “Doorbell.” “Doorbell” »

A lot of excellent songs were entered in the Power Line Prize competition, and you can hear a number of them at our YouTube channel. This one, “American Dream” by Fabian Chavez, was one of my two favorites, along with the second-place finisher, “Don’t You See?” I really like the way Chavez sings the song, and the lyrics pack a punch: American Dream The man on TV said my hope »

“Our Debt Pool,” submitted by Philip (Joey) DeSena, was Hugh Hewitt’s favorite entry in the Power Line Prize competition, and was generally popular with linear thinkers. DeSena does an excellent job of making facts and statistics about the national debt come to life: »

One of my favorite entries in the Power Line Prize contest was this short animated video, Passing the Buck, by Kyle Butler. It did as good a job as any at explaining the debt crisis and its impact on our children. It hasn’t yet gone viral, but it deserves to. Please vote for it in the People’s Choice competition if it is your favorite non-prize winning entry, but, in any »

As I said yesterday, we are adding a final prize to the Power Line Prize contest: the People’s Choice Award. People’s Choice is an opportunity for our readers to vote on their favorite entry that did not win a cash prize. We have selected eight nominees, based on the judges’ scores, readers’ comments, and virality so far. Once we have posted the eight contenders, we will put up a poll »

Along with videos, songs, essays and power points, a surprising number of paintings and other graphic images were entered in the contest. I, personally, liked them a lot. This one, The Prince of America, got the most reaction from our readers. The artist, Jeremy Rosenstein Kortes, talked about the enigmatic image–created, remarkably, on an iPad–in the comments section of our post. It was interesting to get his thoughts on what »

As we announced yesterday, there were many excellent entries in the Power Line Prize competition, only four of which won cash prizes. Our readers debated the merits of various entries in comments sections, and a number of entries that were not awarded prizes by our panel of expert judges had a lot of popular support. Hence the People’s Choice Award: $2,000 to whichever non-prize winning entry gets the most votes »

The Power Line Prize contest has been a lot of fun, and is, so far, a notable success. My informal metric has been that if the videos, songs, paintings etc. that were entered in the contest receive a total of at least 1 million views and listens, the contest is successful. Currently, we are over half way there. Given that the federal spending/debt crisis will be with us for some »

We have added more videos from the Power Line Prize contest to our YouTube channel, including some we haven’t put up on this site. You can see them there. Now I want to recognize one of the most extraordinary contest entries we received. It didn’t win a prize, even though it was exceptionally creative and well done, because we couldn’t figure out a way to disseminate it. The entry is »

Several entries in the Power Line Prize competition have gotten a lot of attention and a lot of views or listens. But unquestionably, the one that has most gone viral so far is Doorbell. If you haven’t yet seen it, you should follow the link and check it out. So far, Doorbell has been viewed around 150,000 times, divided equally between our archive page and its YouTube page. (We get »

I said earlier today that, even though the grand prize winner in the Power Line Prize contest has been announced, there are still a few entries that we want to make public but haven’t yet gotten to. This one is perhaps the most unusual entry we received. It came from a dance company, and I titled it “Dance For the Debt.” This video was unique in several ways; among other »

You probably thought that now that we have awarded the grand prize, we wouldn’t be releasing any more Power Line Prize entries. Not so! There are several more that we think our readers, and the general public, will find interesting. Of the 200 to 300 entries in the contest, a considerable number were essays. Most were good; quite a few recited the now-familiar statistics associated with the federal debt crisis. »